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Stats on popularity from TIOBE: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... (Obj-C now the 5th most popular and quickly rising)
Other sources:
http://lang-index.sourceforge.net/ https://github.com/languages
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6 months ago, there were 250 million iOS devices had been sold - that's iOS only, no Macs. I make that one for every 28 human beings on this planet. What number would tip this so that you considered Apple devices to be common?
To be fair, many people own multiple iOS devices.
Unlike most of you Hacker News readers may think, Apple devices are not common out there (yes, I know, there are iPhones - yet they're too expensive and most of their applications are NOT being coded in Obj-C), so Obj-C didn't catch on yet.
Many applications developers will target iOS before they target android etc, even though the sales numbers may be higher simply because the apple store has a reputation for converting paid apps better.
Therefor, any serious mobile developer probably know objective C.
Not sure what you think the applications are being coded in? Sure, maybe some use cross platform toolkits but I bet the best selling apps are written in obj-C or at least by developers familiar with it.
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Could you? Because there's the Mono project for .Net for example. Which seems pretty popular. Where's the ObjC equivalent?
A Mono-a-like is not required as Apple has fully open sourced it. Instead there's GCC, Clang and http://www.gnustep.org/
Is Objective-C really popular now? I mean would people volunteer to use it, if they weren't forced by Apple? One indicator would be that there would be ports of Objective-C to many platforms, is that the case?
You could make the same argument for other languages - I've never used Java out of preference, but have written 100,000s of lines of it because it was what was required to get the job done in the context. I still think it's popular.
Edit: I forgot about Android, but Java was "popular" before that - in fact Android probably uses Java because Java was popular...
Is Objective-C really popular now? I mean would people volunteer to use it, if they weren't forced by Apple? One indicator would be that there would be ports of Objective-C to many platforms, is that the case?
When NeXT shared their compiler patches and runtime (after some GPL-prodding), Objective-C became part of gcc and available on pretty much any supported platform, especially after the GNU-runtime delivered a portable messenger ( objc_msg_lookup()() vs. objc_msgSend() ).
That's the language itself, but you also need to consider the frameworks implemented in it.
NeXTSTep itself was, of course, ported to Intel, HP-Precision architecture and SPARC. Compiling for other architectures was as simple as checking a box in Project Builder. Later there were OPENSTEP-compatible implementations on Windows and Solaris.
The grand-daddy of the open-source implementations is, of course, GNUStep, though there are a bunch more that have been around for a while such as libFoundaton and mgstep. My current favorite is Cocotron, it allows cross-compilation for Windows and Linux right out of Xcode.
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You could make the same argument for other languages - I've never used Java out of preference, but have written 100,000s of lines of it because it was what was required to get the job done in the context. I still think it's popular.
Perhaps for J2ME development, but apart from that I'd say thousands of companies have individually decided to use Java. Apple is just one company that has decided to use Objective-C. Edit: I forgot about Android, but Java was "popular" before that - in fact Android probably uses Java because Java was popular...
Languages aren't used in a vacuum, and the economics of them involve positive network externalities and switching costs, so 'individually' needs some qualification.